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Month: June 2006

Perhaps I should take a moment to clue in everybody about where the hell Iâ€™ve been.

The PhD grind continues. The spring 2006 semester was easily the hardest Iâ€™d had since becoming a graduate student. I escaped with a A- in one class, a scar that will surely haunt me to the end of my days. Thatâ€™s my second, which keeps me at the frustrating 3.99 mark.

One more 12-hour semester in the fall, though, and the coursework is done.

I guess I did ok. I sent off my first academic paper, on paragraph theory, to a journal; I went to my first conference – CCCC in Chicago – and presented for the first time; and I won an award for being the outstanding graduate student in theEnglish department.

Iâ€™m supposed to be revamping the Englishwebpage this summer, but this task (when I actually get the server access to start it) will not quite pay the summer bills. However, I think a small teaching gig has appeared that will make up most of the difference.

In the meantime. I am not entirely idle. I have started teaching myself the Koine Greek of the New Testament, with the goal of getting through the Gospel of John by August. Why? Well, I have become more or less enamored with rhetorical criticism of the NT; I aim to send off a mostly-finished paper on NT agricultural metaphor by July. And I think I will try to write a history of prose rhythm teaching in the fall.

There are plenty of irons in the fire, I think, not counting at least two collaborations going on. If I am extraordinarily lucky, by Xmas I will have sent out five papers in 2006.

That would be a good thing, as when my comprehensive exams approach (spring 2007) I will not have much time to try my hand at publishing. I might get a paper out that summer as sort of a prelim to the dissertation, but Iâ€™m not counting on it. Iâ€™d like to leave the UoM in spring 2008 with 3 or so publications, and at least 1 of them being a good one in a good journal. Ideally one would be in comp, another in rhetoric, and another in NT criticism or tech writing, to show versitility.

Thatâ€™s the plan. What actually happens between now and May 2008 is not predictable. But I am on schedule, one year into a planned three-year PhD, and I think it will come off mostly according to plan.

As I am a PhD student in rhetoric and composition, my first thought was to type in every rhetorical term I could think of into whois. I had high hopes for synecdoche and enthymeme. But practically every term available is taken. One wasnâ€™t – runningstyle.com – and itâ€™s actually highly appropriate for a blog. But it would sound like Iâ€™m a long-distance runner to most.

I am a great admirer of Patrick Oâ€™Brianâ€™s novels, and noted stephenmaturin.com and diseasesofseamen.com were available, but I might get sued for the first, and as for the second, I imagined myself cheerfully telling someone the name of the site and them picturing a miscolored glop of semen. I already have enough trouble at parties.

Composition terms were also unavailable. Firstdraft was taken. Seconddraft was taken. Thirddraft was taken. Fourthdraft was not, but by that point I was disillusioned.

What about my name? mikeduncan.com = taken. michaelduncan=taken. mduncan=taken. mgduncan and michaelgaryduncan were available, but not snappy enough.

I returned to rhetoric. What about goodrhetoric.com? Available. Positive, too. Badrhetoric.com? Available. Iâ€™m an iconoclast (also taken) so it didnâ€™t look bad (cough) either.

I also thought about meansofpersuasion, which is a play off of Aristotleâ€™s definition of rhetoric. â€œavailable means of persuasionâ€ is too long, alas. It also has a moderate/mathamathical subtext from â€œmeansâ€ and there is a economic â€œmeans of persuasionâ€ as well. But itâ€™s also fairly obscure.

So my best choices after an afternoon of searching were runningstyle, goodrhetoric, and badrhetoric. Of the three, the first has a problematic double meaning and Aristotle didnâ€™t favor it anyway. The second sounds a tad pretentious, as would bestrhetoricâ€¦

â€¦but badrhetoric, however, has a edge to it. Especially since the difference between â€œbadâ€ rhetoric and â€œgoodâ€ rhetoric is hard to define. One manâ€™s â€œbadâ€ rhetoric is another manâ€™s â€œgoodâ€ rhetoric, and so-called â€œbadâ€ rhetoric can be more effective than a classical speech that dots the â€˜iâ€™ in Aristotle. Plus, I kind of like starting at the bottom.

Well! I have just talked myself into badrhetoric. Both domains will work for the foreseeable future, but the title is officially now Bad Rhetoric.

It occurs to me that my â€œCatching Upâ€ earlier was entirely academic and job-related. I should fill in some of the remaining personal blanks.

Iâ€™m still with H, and I mean â€œstillâ€ in its positive, amazing sense.

My birthday is in a few days. Iâ€™ll be 31, which is incredible. I feel more like 23.

The post-semester break has allowed me to catch up on PC gaming. I played Oblivion through (very good and very long), Godfather: The Game (more amusing than good) and Hitman: Blood Money (excellent, the best of the series). Right now Iâ€™m playing with Rise of Legends a little, though itâ€™s hard for an RTS to keep my attention very long. The monster computer I built over the Xmas break (so Oblivion and FEAR would be playable) has run like a top, especially after I put a Zalman cooler in.

H and I have been catching up on TV, too. Weâ€™ve watched all of Twin Peaks and kept up with the new Doctor Who. I think Tennant makes a fine Doctor; heâ€™s not in Bakerâ€™s class, but heâ€™s up there. Iâ€™m also finally up to date on all the HBO series I like – Iâ€™ve seen all the Sopranos, Deadwood, Rome, and Carnivale. Iâ€™ve spent some time in the boards analyzing this last Sopranos season – I think it was brilliant, which appears to be a minority opinion. Perhaps I will write something up about that.

I also hit the comics again. I read all of The Invisibles, a really fine if quirky British comic, got caught up with Powers, and noticed there is still no Ultimates #11. Sigh.

Iâ€™ve restarted Novel #2 again. Itâ€™s better than before and the story seems alive once more. Iâ€™ve restarted it a billion times, of course, and I keep changing major things. Youâ€™d think after six years Iâ€™d have a better idea of major plot points, but it has a mind of its own. I think it may be that Iâ€™m trying to write a story that is inherently episodic in the form of a novel. The resulting fit is poor. At least I know Iâ€™m fully capable of writing a long-winded book.

It has also occurred to me that I should state my opinions on the current political climate. After all, that is what I used to do with this site, and what I intend to do so again.

The 2008 election is beyond commentary until the primaries begin. The 2006 elections will result in a Democratic pickup of seats in both houses, but itâ€™s not a sure thing about either house switching control. Thereâ€™s just not a lot of open /and/ vunerable seats. As unpopular as Bush is, and as bad as sixth-year elections tend to be for the party in power, Iâ€™d say GOP is probably going to escape with a razor-slim majority in both. Iâ€™m not as cheerfully optimistic as I used to be. Then again, Iâ€™m not a Democrat anymore, either.

Iraq is actually a little worse than Iâ€™d predicted. I remember making a huge fuss when the fatalities went over 1,000. Now weâ€™re at nearly 2500. The rate is rock-steady above 2 a day. Nothing good there. I think I said a year ago that there would be no major troop reduction for at least two years. I donâ€™t think weâ€™re in any danger of that changing until a new President arrives. Thereâ€™s just too much blood and institutional investment to stop, just as there was in Vietnam. President Howard Dean would have trouble even starting a pullout at this point.

The death of Al-Zarqawi is only of historical interest. The US did not kill a top leader as much as create a martyr. He is as effective dead as he was alive – maybe more so. Given, there are no shortage of martyrs on either side at this point, but a martyr that everyone knows the name of is better than a local one.

If there was something telling about this particular assassination, it is the downplaying of the other people that died in the bombing. Itâ€™s hard to say from all the different media accounts, but apparently at least one child and perhaps two were killed of the 7 people in the house when it was bombed. Most of the time, the articles and news reports donâ€™t even mention it.

This is a particularly good example of the monkeysphere; we care about Zarqawi because the press and the government has told us his name and told us to hate him – he has personal qualities – but the other people that die remain unnamed and faceless. Insurgents die all the time in Iraq, in droves, apparently, but one man in an elaborate cell structure, where leaders are by definition de-emphasized, is magnified for drama.

I wonder if the other people in the house were hardened Al-Qaida, or he was just using a familyâ€™s house for cover. Perhaps only the father or head of household was sympathetic and part of his safehouse network, and the rest of the family oblivious, frightened, or see-no-evil.

Weâ€™ll never know, I guess. The news cycle has driven its point home – the US killed a major terrorist. Progress has been made, allegedly. Too bad, of course, that there are an unlimited amount of â€œmajorâ€ terrorists, and they have a great training ground.